


Pandora's Churn

by TheMightyChester



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, D/s relationship, Human Cow Kink, Lactation, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Romantic Comedy, does it count as, if they don't MEET in a coffee shop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 07:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16760887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMightyChester/pseuds/TheMightyChester
Summary: Christian thought that being student by day and anonymous human cow by night-and-five-times-per-day was the quiet, comfortable life he had finally deserved after a stifling and traumatising childhood.He just hadn't expected to become the protagonist of some soap opera involving hot strangers, family drama, an evolution of his own desires, and an illegal amount of cake and assorted dairy products.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly the silliest thing I have ever written.
> 
> As a warning, it will involve Body And Gender Feels (both dysphoria and euphoria) that don't fit within the accepted male/female binary. If that makes you uncomfortable for whatever reason, proceed with caution or avoid reading altogether.

The Maids, thus named by their founder Mae who thought the joke was really funny, had approached Christian when he was 18 and about to do something Really Stupid.  
It had been a conflicted urge, half drive to actually move forward and do something for himself, and half self destructive urge to do something dangerous. Personal ads were a treacherous sea to sail even in the best of conditions, but when you were the (officially) only son of a rich and famous man and his actually-legally-wed-wife-thank-you-very-much, posting there amounted to setting out in the middle of a storm on an inflatable boat.  
Christian had set out anyway. Part of him was hoping that he could navigate this safely in the end and actually get something out of it, and the other part didn't quite admit to thinking that if he went down, his father would go down with him. Which, on the surface, he was trying to avoid, but that made his stomach buzz with vindicated excitement.  
No amount of abuse and gaslighting and puppeting around for the public could fix a broken reputation. And that was, in its own way, safe. Even if he went down, even if his whole life was ruined, he couldn't be erased again.  
And so that was why Christian Mordoré, age 18 and freshly settled into the apartment he'd convinced his parents to let him rent next door to his university, went to a site dedicated to unusual sexual and otherwise intimate practices and the arrangement of encounters involving said practices, agonised over a nickname for about a week, and finally posted an ad.  
He was offering milk.

“I didn't expect you to be a guy,” Mae said when she finally met him some two weeks later. “Although I guess at a glance you could easily pass, if you weren't so tall.”  
Where someone else might have taken offense, Christian took the comment in slightly satisfied silence. He'd never felt the urge to modify his body, but the idea of being at least in _some_ part feminine had long been something comfortable, a part not dictated by his father that felt more true to himself. It was part of what had pushed him to post his ad in the first place, a need to embrace the part of himself he'd clung to in secret.  
“You should probably be careful when doing that kind of thing, though,” she added. “Some people get real nasty when you don't have the kind of body they expected and fantasised about.”  
“I used a gender neutral name on purpose…”  
“Not good enough when people _want_ to find a reason to punish you. I'm not saying it's right, kiddo, I'm talking safety. Always protect yourself first.”  
“… admittedly, safety wasn't the highest priority. This was… already a step down from the other service I had considered.”  
She looked at him, with the kind of piercing eyes that told him she'd seen enough cases to see right through him, then sighed and looked away, as if resigned.  
“Kids… well, it's a good thing I got to you quickly, then. Anyway,” she continued more brightly, “did you induce from scratch yourself, then? That's impressive.”  
He smiled, nostalgic.  
“Not quite… I started having drops not too long after I hit puberty… it never got more than that, but eventually my father found out and had me see a specialist in secret… she said it would stop on its own once my hormones balanced themselves out, if I didn't touch anything.”  
“Well, doesn't look like you stopped,” she said, casting an amused glance at his chest. It could still be excused away with some strong pectorals… maybe. Depending on how he was dressed.  
“I was desperate for it not to stop. It was… something that was mine, I suppose. I just got better at hiding it.”  
The way she looked at him was filled with… not quite pity, maybe, but compassion. Somehow, he felt like she understood him, on some level. He wasn't used to that. The last time someone had understood him even a little was Edward, and there had been _so much_ about him that Edward hadn't known. So much that he'd hidden so he could be the perfect big brother and maybe shield him from what a mess their family was.  
For all the good that did.  
“Well, you seem motivated enough, so why don't you try working with us instead of having to filter out who's actually interested and who's just out to get their kicks at your expense? Everyone uses a nickname, and you won't come in direct contact with the customers—I know it kills the buzz for some, but depending on what you're going for, it can be turned into something exciting easily enough.”  
He thought about it. Maybe he'd originally wanted to feel used, to have eyes on him that looked at him not with admiration and fear, not with the hate reserved for a personal failure, but with the kind of contempt reserved for what isn't actually human. But now that he'd actually found someone who knew what he was and still wanted to talk to him, the destructive edge was easing, a tiny bit.  
But being kept out of view while his milk was sold like a commodity brought a similar excitement, if a less degrading one. He smiled. Maybe this _was_ a good solution.  
“So what are the terms?”  
“Get yourself tested for any transmittable infections at the lab I'll specify. Then if you're clear, we can help you with the equipment if you don't have any. We'll protect your anonymity, but you officially don't know us either. You can either donate or sell, but if you sell, you'll be paid in cash. And of course, don't miss deliveries without warning,” she added with a smile that told him she didn't expect him to.  
“How and where do I deliver?”  
“I'll tell you that if you decide to join. But we do adapt to people's circumstances; for some of them, we come pick the milk up ourselves. Usually, though, we schedule meeting times.”  
He nodded.  
“… I'll think about it.”

In reality, he didn't think about it. His decision had been made almost instantly, an impulsive streak that was coming to life as reaction to a life of constant hypervigilance and careful decisions that often had no right solution.  
Two days later, he was at the lab. A few days after _that_ , his clear results in hand, he was contacting Mae again. And a few days after _that_ , he was getting his first electric pump, finally able to commit to supply instead of trying to keep it going with his hands and manual pump.  
It was just a little, at first. He hadn't been out of his parents' house for very long, and until then any efforts had to be secret, and the results, including on his anatomy, had to be subtle enough that they didn't suspect anything. But now, nothing was standing in his way.  
Another week more, and he was delivering his first bottles, each with the accumulated milk of one day, lovingly drawn every few hours. It had been years since he'd last felt so satisfied and proud of himself, if he ever had.  
Two years later, his supply had grown, and the few fellow members of the Maids he interracted with could probably be counted as friends. As long as he studied in the right field and got the right grades, his father was mostly content to forget he existed. And his pumping and delivering routines had found their place in his daily life and schedule, becoming his new normal.  
Honestly, life had never been better. The wounds that had led him to act rashly were starting to heal, and nothing in the near future seemed like it could ruin the careful equilibrium.

Nothing. Except meeting the love of his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who said a cow's life was peaceful and uneventful?

When he could look at it without panicking about what a mess he was in (which wasn't often), the situation really felt like some kind of soap opera.  
He had been out shopping for art supplies that day; art wasn't a class he was _supposed_ to take, but he had all the credits he needed for his major already, and he had the means, and most of the class was actually homework to bring in and online History of Art lessons and tests, which suited him very well considering he had to worry about not staying on campus for too many hours in a row. The problem was that the supplies themselves were already cumbersome, and his impulse purchase of some long rolls of decorative paper even more, and in the increasingly crowded subway (why had he let rush hour creep upon him again—oh, right. Impulse purchases. And the purchases he had to stop himself from making. Never let him roam free in an art store again), getting around was starting to feel like Olympic Sport material. When he finally tripped over his feet and fell down the last two steps of a set of stairs (with some help from someone who shoved him and never looked back, probably too preoccupied with their own hurried life), he was almost relieved to see things finally come to their logical conclusion. It was going to happen at some point. At least now it was done and over with.  
A few people eyed him as they passed, but since he wasn't screaming in pain or bleeding all over the floor, no one actually stopped.  
Well, it was his own fault. He sat up in a less disjointed position, and reached for his scattered supplies—thankfully, none of them had been inks. Hopefully he'd come out of this with only a few shattered pencil cores.  
A hand came into his field of vision, dangerously close to his face. He jumped a little, and stared at it for a second—oh, it was holding his box of pastels—then up the wrist and arm and towards a face that was staring at him with a slight frown.  
His heart and breath caught. The young man's face was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a prowling panther, not of a flower or a statue. Strong yet dynamic lines that under an artist's pencil would call for dramatic line weight rather than careful cross-hatching. A firm, determined mouth, set not in disdain or anger but quiet worry. Eyes that dug right into him, so sharp that any prey must have been pinned in place by their intensity. And framing his face, filtering the light and falling past his shoulders, a mane of wild red dark hair.  
Christian had never in his life been able to pinpoint what his Type could be. Now, he knew it was just because he'd never met it before.  
“That's yours, right?”  
His voice was rough, but kind. A complete contrast to the sweetened, sophisticated poison he had grown around.  
“I—yes. Thank you.”  
“Don't mention it.”  
He took his box, still dazed, and was expecting the stranger to just leave, but instead he stayed crouched and picked up another of Christian's supplies, then stood to retrieve one of his rolls of paper that had rolled some distance away.  
“Think someone stepped on the end,” he said, glaring at the flattened end of the roll.  
“Oh, it's fine—it's my fault to begin with for letting it fall.”  
The young man stood again. Suddenly scared to see him leave without even catching his name, Christian hurriedly crammed his supplies back into his shopping bag and stood. And looked down.  
His saviour was almost a head shorter than him.  
He blinked. Now that he wasn't looking _up_ at him and that the light was falling on his face, the red-haired young man looked younger—Christian's own age at most, and probably less, although maybe it was his height that made him seem that way. But despite the height difference being reversed, he didn't seem threatened or flustered at all, watching him instead with those sharp, unyielding eyes.  
In fact, from this angle, he could see how surprisingly broad his shoulders were, even in that black shirt, and—oh no, he was blushing.  
“… are you alright?” the young man asked, apparently mistaking the cause of Christian's distress.  
“Y-yes. I'm sorry for the trouble, thank you for helping me.”  
He nodded, but didn't move. Christian tried not to fidget.  
“Um… I'm all right now, you don't need to keep watch over me or anything…”  
The young man blinked, as if surprised.  
“Huh?” And then he seemed to understand. “Oh—no, I'm waiting for someone. I was just over there,” he added, pointing, and when he turned back to look at Christian he was smiling, a smile like warm sunlight that made his eyes sparkle, and Christian's knees must have been made of ice because he was pretty sure they were melting at the contact.  
And then the words hit him.  
Waiting for someone. He was taken—of _course_ he was taken, a guy like that probably had a bunch of people falling at his feet, and why was he even thinking about this? He had accepted long ago that he would probably never have a relationship of his own, and that one day his family would shove him at a profitable fiancée and he'd have little say in the matter. He was just too _weird_. Dating someone was a laughable idea; dating an attractive stranger he met in the subway, outrageous.  
“Ah… well, thank you anyway… I think I'll wait for the next train, then.”  
It was the most pathetic and awkward exit ever (where had all his social grace gone?), and he was about to turn and flee with whatever dignity remained when the young man's face suddenly shifted, his eyes widening and staring into space like a cat hearing a suspicious noise. And then he turned, suddenly, waving towards the top of the stairs.  
“Hey! Over here!”  
Another teenage boy dodged his way out of the thickest of the crowd and casually walked down the stairs towards them. A boy with dark eyes and darker hair, and the face of someone who was angry at the entire world.  
Christian's heart stopped, for real this time.  
“You're usually on the other side of the platform,” the boy told Christian's read-headed stranger.  
“Yeah, sorry, this guy needed help so…”  
The boy's eyes slid over to Christian and froze. It was like seeing his own reflection, his own shock displayed on the other boy's face. A face that, a few years and a different expression aside, was painfully familiar.  
They stared at each other. Christian couldn't make himself move, and while the other boy's face didn't change, his eyes quickly shifted between different emotions. Shock. Betrayal. Hope. Anger.  
And then, as his red-head friend started looking between the two of them questioningly, _offended disbelief_.  
“… you've gotta be _kidding me_.”  
“Edward? Do you know each other?”  
“I dunno! Good question! _He_ sure hasn't seemed to know me for the last, what, ten years?”  
Suddenly, Christian wished he had run off when he had a chance.  
“Edward…”  
“I don't wanna talk to a guy who can't even muster the pity to answer even a _single letter_! Was that really so far below you?”  
He blinked.  
“Letter? What letter?”  
They stared at each other again, Christian in incomprehension, Edward in anger. How was he supposed to react; what was he supposed to _say_? And by then, people were staring at _them_ , and he could feel all their eyes on them. On him, especially, who towered over the two others.  
After a tense moment, his saviour saved him once again, stepping between them nonchalantly.  
“I think we should _all_ go have a drink. Somewhere more private.”


End file.
